Faster way to move emails from one folder to another?

[Martin Steigerwald]

Hi John.

John White - 10.09.19, 00:21:20 CEST:
> I have been using "message>move message to."  Takes
> forever. I understand there may be a faster way.  Would
> appreciate any info about this possible alternative.
> 
> I have thousands of emails in my in inbox (kmail2, pop3,
> debian buster).  I moved all the 2018 emails to a new folder,
> inbox-2018.  Now I want to do same with messages received in
> 2017 but don't have another weekend to spare.

The only way I know that is faster it to move files around in the 
filesystem. Preferably while Akonadi is running and monitoring the 
directory where the Maildir resource points to via Inotify.

For that you need to locate where your Maildir resource points to. You 
can see that via Akonadiconsole in the context menu about configuring the 
resource.

However the challenge with this is to find the right files to move. At 
least there files from the individual mails have different time stamps, so 
one thing that would most likely work quite easily would be to move files  
by time by using a specially crafted find command.

On moving files this way Akonadi would synchronize the affected folders 
and just update its database. 

I'd only recommend this way for advanced users willing to dig into the 
structure of the maildir directory and *after* a good backup. And of 
course… if it breaks, you get to keep the pieces. This is in no way 
supported or endorsed by KDEPIM developers.

And if you still use a KMail mixedmaildir thing and have mbox folders 
this approach will not work.

That all written I used moving things around in the filesystem sometimes 
and in generally worked much fast than doing it with KMail.

Thanks,
-- 
Martin